After 3 Years of Fawning, His Family Begged

"Maren Holloway!" "Stop standing there like an i***t. Clean this up before you ruin Callum's mood." Isolde Locke looked at me with undisguised contempt, the kind of look you'd give something you found at the bottom of your shoe. A stranger walking in might have mistaken her for the lady of the house. I bent down and picked up the diamond ring from the floor, its band twisted and crushed beneath her heel. I closed my fingers around it. The cold metal bit into my palm, and the pain cut deeper than that. I looked up at Callum Vane, who stood only a short distance away. "And you're just going to stand there?" He turned at the sound of my voice, slow and impatient, and gave me a dismissive glance. "Isolde's only looking out for me. She doesn't want to see me put on the spot. Ninety-nine times, Maren. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I've told you before, I'm not ready for marriage." Every pair of eyes in the room swung toward me—sympathy, pity, and beneath it all, the barely concealed delight of people watching a spectacle. Ninety-nine proposals. A woman to a man. Each one grander than the last, and each one another installment in my humiliation before Harlow's social elite. Something invisible seemed to close around my chest, squeezing until I couldn't breathe. I had first seen Callum three years ago. The moment I did, I froze. He looked so much like Evan Mercer, my first love, the one I had lost, that I felt the ground shift beneath me. I made him a promise then and there: "Callum, give me a chance. I'll make you the happiest man in the world." He had smiled, easy and confident. "Then you'd better work for it. I don't have patience for women who give up halfway." For the sake of that single sentence, I gave up my plans to study abroad. I poured every asset in my name into the Vane family when they were teetering on the edge of collapse, and I rebuilt them from the ground up until they stood among the most powerful enterprises in the country. And what did I get in return? I got Isolde, growing bolder by the day. Just that morning, I had gone to pick Callum up, hoping to surprise him. It was Isolde who answered the door. "He stayed up too late last night and doesn't want to go out today," she said, then added, with a cool once-over at my car, "That color is tacky. It doesn't suit him. Don't bring it around again." Callum had been standing right behind her the whole time, silent, which was as good as agreement. I found out later why he had stayed up so late: he had spent the entire night with Isolde, watching the stars. I swallowed my anger. I told myself it didn't matter, not tonight. Tonight was the proposal. I could be patient a little longer. Instead, I got this. Isolde saw the color drain from my face and smiled wider, savoring it. She stepped closer and dropped her voice to a murmur near my ear. "Save yourself the trouble. You're nothing but a pastime to him, something to reach for when he's bored. The kind of woman he actually wants is someone like me—someone who keeps things interesting." She expected me to do what I always did: swallow it, smile, and protect his dignity at the cost of my own. She was wrong. Thud. I drove my foot into her stomach. The force of it sent her crashing into the champagne cart beside her, glasses and bottles toppling in a cascade of shattered crystal. "Know your place," I said. "I don't answer to the help." "You hit me?" Isolde clutched her stomach, her face contorted in pain, staring up at me in pure disbelief. Then Callum's hand cracked across my face. "Have you lost your mind, Maren?" His voice was sharp and cold, each word landing like a separate blow. "Isolde is mine. You touch her, you disrespect me. Apologize to her. Right now." The room went absolutely silent. Isolde struggled to her feet, and as she did, a slow, icy smile curved at the corner of her mouth. She knew he would always take her side.